From a celeb always ready for Halloween to one unfortunate dog

It all starts off so innocently. A little nip here, a little tuck there, a bit off the nose, a tug on the face -- and before you know it, something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Stars who wanted only to be a little more beautiful, a little more handsome, a little more like the picture they carried of themselves inside their minds, turn out looking as if they were seeking work in a field scaring away the crows.

Why do celebrities, with their mountains of money and access to the best plastic surgeons in the world, so often end up with faces and bodies gone disastrously wrong?

Maybe they just wanted to make us laugh.

First up, our first celebrity is always ready for Halloween ...

No. 5: Joan Rivers

The mouth opens and closes, and the eyes blink, but nothing else on Joan Rivers' face is able to budge. The skin is stretched so tight that there is nowhere for it to go.

She has had god-knows-how-many injections of Botox. In addition to changing her face, she also altered her stomach, breasts, and arms. Rivers revels in her many plastic surgeries, and she even wrote a book urging other women to go under the knife.

The good news is that for a woman in her 70s, she doesn't exactly look old. The bad news is that she doesn't exactly look human, either.

Like a Halloween mask, her reconstructed face hides her true face with all its flaws -- but like a Halloween mask, it is also apt to scare little children.

Our next selection could have just as well been called the king of plastic surgery ...

No. 4: Michael Jackson

Though it's not nice to speak badly of the dead, no article on plastic surgery disasters would be complete without a nod to Michael Jackson, the King of Pop -- and the King and Patron Saint of Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong.

When Jackson directed his artistic genius outward into song and dance, the result was pure magic. When he directed the same artistic energy inward, onto his body, the result was tragic.

It turns out the body can take only so much. Then nature rebels and stamps its foot and says it won't be tampered with any more.

Why didn't someone stop Jackson? Surely his doctors must have known what was likely to happen. That Jackson was always able to find doctors willing to do more surgeries is one more tragedy in a tragic and too short life.

You won't believe what our next celebrity dented ...

No. 3: Janet Jackson

Does a tendency toward plastic surgery disasters runs in families? Take a look at Janet Jackson.

She was photographed wearing a low-cut dress that revealed a big dent in her right breast -- the apparent result of a breast-enhancement procedure gone bad.

Such breast-related plastic surgery disasters come in many varieties.

Some women, who end up with enormous breasts, look as though they are auditioning for a circus side show -- or for the Guinness Book of Records. Others have breasts that look like bowling balls glued to their chests. Mismatched breasts, where one is larger than the other or where one has shifted position, must be horribly embarrassing.

But nothing is as tacky as a breast with a dent in it.

In addition to Janet Jackson, Vivica Fox was also photographed in a dress that showed off a big dent in her own breast. Let's hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Our next celebrity didn't stop at designing clothes ...

No. 2: Donatella Versace

Fashion designer Donatella Versace made the mistake of trying to redesign her face.

She should have stuck with designing clothes. Her face is now all out of proportion, with a big nose and huge lips that look as if they belong on a horse.

To make matters worse, Versace often wears so much dark eye makeup that her eyes appear to recede and almost disappear, making her face look as if it were all nose and lips.

It's not as though Versace, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, couldn't afford to hire the best plastic surgeons in the world. Yet she ended up with a face that looked as if it had been worked on by a medical-school dropout.

Moral of the story No. 1: Plastic surgery is not an exact science. Moral of the story No. 2: Horses are for riding, not for using as models for your face.

Courtney Love, the rocker who is not know for leading a sedate life, experienced a weird tragedy when her breast implant killed her dog.

Love had her breast implants removed, but kept them as a souvenir. One day, her Pomeranian ate one of them and was poisoned and died.

Love's press agent claimed that the fatal implant was not actually Love's implant, but a different one that was a Mexican bootleg. That's the kind of explanation that makes things even less clear than they were before.

If true, why was Love keeping an implant that wasn't hers around the house? And are bootleg implants more toxic to small dogs than official implants?

Celebrities, to be safe, after removing any bootleg implants, be sure to store them out of the reach of your pets.

It's OK to mangle your own features, dent your own breasts, tighten your face to the breaking point. Really, we appreciate the laughs you provide. Just make sure that no animals are hurt in the making of your disastrous new look.